ART IN REVIEW

By KEN JOHNSON

Published: September 20, 2002

Ricky Swallow -- 'Tomorrow in Common'

Andrea Rosen Gallery

525 West 24th Street

Chelsea

Through Oct. 12

In the mid-1980's, when savvy, politically minded artists were finding new uses for Pop art, Julia Scher conceived ''Security by Julia,'' a fictive company with pink-uniformed personnel equipped with the latest in surveillance technology. Ms. Scher has continued to produce theatrical installations satirizing a society in which electronic monitoring has become an increasingly familiar, paranoia-inducing experience.

Issues of security are, of course, more urgent than ever. Curiously, however, Ms. Scher's latest installation has no references to the post9/11 world. Rather, it's like a prison camp in a sci-fi movie set in some zany parallel universe. Within a spiraling, cyclone-fence structure, lights flash, overhead fans spin, computer-driven monitors track viewer movements, and resonant speakers broadcast officious but peculiar announcements in a woman's voice: ''Your sensate probes are being measured now''; ''Prayer time is available in Sector Five.''

The female voice, authoritative yet soothing, gives the whole a maternal aspect, amplified by pink baby blankets attached here and there to the fence; torn sheets of fleshlike pink rubber draped about add a hint of evil. What it all means, maybe, is that our willingness to embrace smothering security measures may be a function of our collective infantilism. What we have to fear now is not Big Brother but Big Mother.

Don't miss Ricky Swallow's remarkable wooden sculptures in the gallery's rear exhibition space. Mr. Swallow carves an actual-size tire with a dead fish inside and a down sleeping bag with such verisimilitude that it's as if the real objects had been turned to wood by a sorcerer. KEN JOHNSON